Insurance premiums – House in Florida – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Mark Winfrey
According to recent reports, Florida homeowners are considering selling their homes, canceling their insurance, and even leaving the state as a result of the state’s soaring insurance premium costs.
The state has long been a popular vacation spot for many Americans, and this trend has pushed up demand for accommodation, especially during the pandemic, as well as home prices.
Florida, however, had the biggest number of citizens looking to migrate, per a SelfStorage survey, even if it was the most popular state in the nation for individuals to relocate to in 2022.
In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that 275,666 people—or nearly 23,000 people each month—will have left Florida. The majority moved to states like Georgia (46,884), North Carolina (42,301), Tennessee (36,200), South Carolina (31,456), and Texas (29,975), according to the statistics.
People are fleeing the Sunshine State for a variety of reasons, such as the rising expense of living, the soaring cost of homes, the high property taxes, and the increased risk of lethal and devastation-causing extreme weather events like hurricanes.
According to recent research by the Insurance Information Institute (Triple I), the country’s insurance premiums are the highest. As a result, many Floridians are considering leaving the state since they can no longer afford to insure their homes.
A number of homeowners informed The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that the rising cost of premiums has prompted them to partially or entirely discontinue their insurance coverage—a practice known as “going bare”—and even consider selling their homes.
In the last five years, home insurance costs in the state have tripled, with residents now paying an average of more than $4,200 per year. Triple I figures show that $1,700 is the national average.
According to Oscar Seikaly, chief executive of NSI Insurance Group, certain insurance premiums have increased by roughly nine times from what they were in 2022, with multimillion-dollar residences producing premiums as high as $600,000 a year.
Construction expenses, which are taken into account when estimating how expensive it would be to reconstruct a home once it has been destroyed, have increased by a startling 40 percent since 2017, and this has occurred in part due to the excessive litigation occurring in Florida.
Since many Floridians lack insurance, analysts have raised concerns about what would occur if a significant natural disaster like a hurricane strikes the state.
Going without insurance is “very dangerous because once the storm or the fire hits if they don’t have insurance, they’re going to suffer really big losses,” Yanjun (Penny) Liao, an economist at Resources for the Future, previously told Newsweek.
However, more Floridians are anticipated to renounce coverage for their homes as insurance costs are predicted to rise further and state lawmakers continue to debate how to stop the mass exodus of significant insurers from the state.
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Mike has more than 30 years of experience in marketing and public relations. He once owned his own agency and has worked with some of the largest brands in the world.
